As Barry mentioned, I’m going to do a series of posts over the new few weeks based on the information that I presented at the webinar on Email Management in SharePoint 2010. These posts and the associated audio files and presentation slides break down the webinar into smaller sections and enable people to download the audio and slides and listen/view at their convenience.

In this first section, I’ll discuss how Microsoft is thinking about ECM and in particular email management in terms of how an organization can get it under control. Their are 4 key scenarios that we consider when we think about how to manage emails in an organization. These 4 key scenarios I like to call the continuum, starting on the left hand side with Personal Email Management, then moving right to Project and Case Management, then to Email Archiving and finally to Records Management.

Each of these scenarios has key outcomes and supporting software that Microsoft believes a company needs to manage emails within an organization.

Personal Email Management:
This is essentially driven by the individual and it’s characterized by how I think about email for my own personal purposes. How I consume what comes into my Inbox, how I manage my Inbox and how I act on the content in my Inbox. Personal email management is all about making my day simpler using many of the great new features of Outlook 2010 designed to make managing information easier as well as easier to tag or classify email to help me get my job done.

Key Outcomes:

• Well, managed and organized Inbox
• Information is easy to find
• Email is safe, secure and easy to recover
• Easy to elevate email to a higher purpose
• Easy to age email gracefully

Supporting Platforms and Software:

• Outlook 2010
• Exchange 2010

Project and Case Management:
This is all about dealing with teams, groups, projects, and specific issues within an organization. What’s important to note is that in this scenario, we treat email the same as any other content item such as a Word file, an Excel file, or a PowerPoint presentation. It’s all part of a single entity, whether that’s a single project or single case. I want to manage email in the same way as any other file related to a project. What’s required in this scenario is a consistent approach to managing all those different types of content, a consistent metadata capture requirement across all the content, and a consistent way to apply search and policy to the document or item. Email gets shared along with all the other content to the group.

Key Outcomes:

• Treat email the same as all other artifacts
• Share email broadly without replication
• Capture rich metadata
• Leverage workflow
• Apply rich policy

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• SharePoint 2010
• Colligo Contributor

Email Archiving:
This is something that is more driven by IT and the business as well as by compliance and the regulations placed on the business around how you manage electronic communication. From an IT perspective, it’s about how to manage large volumes of emails coming into a business.

Key Outcomes:

• Simplify application of policy
• Broad brush, time based disposition
• Support larger archives with cheaper disk
• Support e-discovery requests

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• Exchange 2010

Records Management:
This goes beyond the “broad brush” approach of email archiving to records management where it is more about identifying business critical content. This content must have specific metadata capture requirements, specific multi-stage policy applied in order to manage the entire lifecycle, and a set rules and regulations that are adhered to very closely. This also requires that a specific individual in the organization is taking care of this content, monitoring it over its lifecycle, and making sure that the right content is kept for the right period of time and then disposed of in an effective fashion.

Key Outcomes:

• Manage email as a business record
• Leverage file plans for classification
• Capture rich metadata
• Leverage workflow
• Apply rich policy
• Support e-discovery requests

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• SharePoint 2010
• Colligo Contributor

For more information on these scenarios, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides. In the next posting, I’ll discuss what “ECM for the Masses” means for Microsoft.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio

Tagged as: Email Managment, Microsoft, Ryan Duguid, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010